As a long time retail worker I can fully appreciate 'all you had to do was pay us enough to live' I recieve a pretty reasonable wage, after 25 years, I dont have any clue how new hires and others even manage. The company i work for boasts sales closing in on 1 trillion dollars and profits in the multi multi billion dollar range. I know, because I see the profit and loss statements, that there is money available, just not for the floor level employees. Basically we are working to better the lives of the billionaires. It is indeed sad and I wish it would change. I mean, trader Joe's pays their people 20/hrs to start, why can't we!?!?!?
I don't know the answer, but I pray we can stop the oligarchy without violence and destruction. I just try to keep informed, make my voice heard, contact my representatives, and after 5 decades in the streets, I get to keep on protesting. It has worked before. I love what our country stood for, but not what it is becoming... as long as I can I will work to make it better. Anything is better than this current administration.
I don't believe we have to literally burn it all down. All it really takes is enough people to stand firm and declare they will not participate. They will not buy the products, they will not work the jobs and they will not be quiet about it. We could be successful, but the American people are so tired and many are plain lazy. It's too much trouble, but my kids will only eat such and so, my husband won't recycle, etc. etc. I know all the excuses, I am guilty of some myself. But we could do it. The question is...will we?
I live between alternating hope and despair. Days like the past week punch me into sadness, anger, and despair, and messages like these responses awakening the flickering hope once again.
"Still, are we really ready to watch society burn and live with everything that comes after? The fallout? The repair? The people left without jobs? Are we ready to shelter them? To build the mutual aid networks required to hold families together when systems collapse?
"The armchair revolutionaries seem to think so.
"But really stop and think about what it would take to make that kind of upheaval actually work. To make it land in a way that doesn’t backfire catastrophically. I’m highly doubtful that the loudest keyboard warriors are the ones prepared to do that work."
I think most armchair revolutionaries are men. Leftist men are rarely interested in women's equality (they will complain about the draft, but when it comes to the violent and far more common inequality of rape, intimate partner terrorism, feminized poverty, and the theft of women's time and thus lives due to their refusal to do their fair share of adulting and parenting--silence). And they will not be doing most of the repair and reconstruction. We need to be reining them in, telling them to shut up and sit down and leave this to the adults. Who are usually, although I hope not by an overwhelming margin, women.
Whether we are prepared or not. The revolution is necessary and inevitable. So we better get to work.
As a long time retail worker I can fully appreciate 'all you had to do was pay us enough to live' I recieve a pretty reasonable wage, after 25 years, I dont have any clue how new hires and others even manage. The company i work for boasts sales closing in on 1 trillion dollars and profits in the multi multi billion dollar range. I know, because I see the profit and loss statements, that there is money available, just not for the floor level employees. Basically we are working to better the lives of the billionaires. It is indeed sad and I wish it would change. I mean, trader Joe's pays their people 20/hrs to start, why can't we!?!?!?
I don't know the answer, but I pray we can stop the oligarchy without violence and destruction. I just try to keep informed, make my voice heard, contact my representatives, and after 5 decades in the streets, I get to keep on protesting. It has worked before. I love what our country stood for, but not what it is becoming... as long as I can I will work to make it better. Anything is better than this current administration.
I don't believe we have to literally burn it all down. All it really takes is enough people to stand firm and declare they will not participate. They will not buy the products, they will not work the jobs and they will not be quiet about it. We could be successful, but the American people are so tired and many are plain lazy. It's too much trouble, but my kids will only eat such and so, my husband won't recycle, etc. etc. I know all the excuses, I am guilty of some myself. But we could do it. The question is...will we?
I live between alternating hope and despair. Days like the past week punch me into sadness, anger, and despair, and messages like these responses awakening the flickering hope once again.
You are not alone !
"Still, are we really ready to watch society burn and live with everything that comes after? The fallout? The repair? The people left without jobs? Are we ready to shelter them? To build the mutual aid networks required to hold families together when systems collapse?
"The armchair revolutionaries seem to think so.
"But really stop and think about what it would take to make that kind of upheaval actually work. To make it land in a way that doesn’t backfire catastrophically. I’m highly doubtful that the loudest keyboard warriors are the ones prepared to do that work."
I think most armchair revolutionaries are men. Leftist men are rarely interested in women's equality (they will complain about the draft, but when it comes to the violent and far more common inequality of rape, intimate partner terrorism, feminized poverty, and the theft of women's time and thus lives due to their refusal to do their fair share of adulting and parenting--silence). And they will not be doing most of the repair and reconstruction. We need to be reining them in, telling them to shut up and sit down and leave this to the adults. Who are usually, although I hope not by an overwhelming margin, women.